About New York; Nights of Glitz, A Velvet Rope And Memories

By DOUGLAS MARTIN

Published: July 25, 1990

Today is the first anniversary of the death of 45-year-old Steve Rubell, that loquacious scamp who made his mark by being in the right place at the right time in a town where that is often all that matters.

Nobody has felt the loss more than Ian Schrager, Mr. Rubell's best friend and business partner. ''The only time I didn't see Steve was when I was sleeping,'' Mr. Schrager said of 25 years of his 44-year-old life. ''Steve and I were the greatest love story since Cleopatra.''

The two Brooklyn natives founded Studio 54, that cocaine-dusted epicenter of Manhattan glitz. They went to jail in 1980 for 13 months when their innovative accounting - ''cash-in, cash-out and skim'' in Mr. Rubell's memorable phrase - was discovered. They emerged unable to secure a checking account, much less a credit card, and proceeded to climb to the heights of the hotel business - opening the trendy Morgan and new Royalton hotels.

Now, Mr. Schrager is finishing one of their final collaborations, the Paramount hotel at 235 West 46th Street, scheduled to open in three weeks. ''I feel a little naked,'' he said.

But not so naked that he isn't using all manner of ploys to focus attention on the Paramount - including mailing 25,000 toothbrushes to travel agents. It occurred to Mr. Schrager that a newspaper columnist might listen to his recollections of the man who barred the King of Cyprus from Studio 54 ''because he looked like somebody from Queens.''

He said so many people have died along with Mr. Rubell - Andy Warhol, Halston, Roy Cohn are on the list - that a genre is now extinct. ''There's zero night life in New York now,'' the surviving pasha of disco mourned. ''We're trying to jump-start it at this hotel.''

The interview was conducted in a Paramount room furnished in a quirky, surrealistic manner. (A Cyclops eye in the television cabinet emits light, giving the eerie illusion that the TV watches you.) This agile entrepreneur veered between the personal and the promotional. He spoke of a private ceremony planned for the next day, last Friday, at a Long Island cemetery to unveil Mr. Rubell's simple black-granite tombstone with the inscription ''the quintessential New Yorker.'' His family had recoiled at Mr. Schrager's idea that a squirt of public-relations pizazz - something resembling the funeral with Bianca, Calvin, etc. - might hit the spot.

''I would have liked to have had a little bit of show, like I think Steve would have wanted,'' Mr. Schrager said. This is a switch, at least in the public eye. Mr. Schrager was Mr. Inside, the backstage idea maven who never once danced at Studio 54. Mr. Rubell, by contrast, stood behind a velvet rope and separated couples, even mothers and daughters, as he tried to concoct the spiciest human stew.

''I quite frankly was embarrassed by some of that selection process,'' acknowledged Mr. Schrager. ''It smelled like elitism.''

But Mr. Schrager grasped the magic of Mr. Rubell's practiced sociability soon after they met as students at Syracuse University. Mr. Rubell had maneuvered into the coveted role of student-seating czar at the football-crazy school. In the same vein, Mr. Schrager hailed him as ''mayor of the jail'' when they were later in an Alabama penitentiary together.

But Mr. Schrager has been a one-man show for a year, though he still says ''Steve and me.'' It has been his lot to convince partners, bankers, customers and now the middle-class clientele he seeks at the sprawling Paramount that he is a winner all by himself.

The full verdict isn't in, though hotel profits last year rose and his partners have agreed to raise their stakes, he says. Tourism here is dropping. ''I thrive on the challenge,'' he said.

But he admits that it isn't as much fun. Mr. Schrager remembered the exhilaration with which the two would attack a project. ''We were like Spanky and Alfalfa.''

There was an incredible closeness. ''We were like husband and wife,'' he said.

Now there is that last conversation with his dying buddy bouncing around his mind. ''I don't need a pep talk,'' Mr. Rubell said wearily. Mr. Schrager watched an electronic monitor as vital signs ebbed to nothing.

Though hepatitis was the official cause, there have been suggestions that Mr. Rubell died of AIDS complications. Mr. Schrager says he has thought about that. He is convinced his best friend would have told him.

The last year, Mr. Schrager says, has been a maze. One thing that has helped him through it are colorful, though sometimes bittersweet memories. He laughs heartily when recalling how Steve Rubell had answered an important Federal prosecutor (important to them, in particular) asking if he was the kind of person who would be let past the velvet rope.